I’m sure there’s always something that is memorable. Something that sticks in your mind, subconsciously interacting and influencing every move in your gregarious life. How we use terms like ‘Don’t prey prey ah’ in our commonest of conversations, or the unduly way we incorporate dressing styles of the casts in Grey’s Anatomy in our work places. Yet, what engraved itself on me most is none other than the heroic metal clunks of Optimus Prime.

When my childhood craze of Superman gradually lost its momentous cape, I religiously converted to those shining alloy autobots. Strong and sturdy, fast and chunky, rugged and rusty, zest and zippy. How I dreamed I owned Bumble Bee. The angel who never fails risking his life for the one he’s charged to protect, and he looks way cool in that Camero disguise. It’s embarrassing how I regressed myself to when I was a boy, excitedly clenching my teeth on every bend and punch they take in Transformers 2. I felt like a kid again.

When I was 5 (which wasn’t too long ago mind you), my dad bought an off yellow-orangey Volvo 240GL. It was huge, tough and boxed. I still remember how the engine raved and sped ahead all the other feeble weaklings on the road, brightly shinning it’s armor on all my scrawny little primary school friend’s faces. Darn, it was glitzy and gaudy! With much conceit and pride, I’d boast about how my mom looks so hip driving in that metal slug or how astounding it is to see my dad behind the wheels.
2 years later, it failed me.

My dad was driving down a narrow curvy slope some 500 meters away from home, while a bus came speeding up the same slope slammed right into him, both vehicles crashing head on. Splinters of broken glass filled the air like vapor, bursting in kinetic energy they flew directly into his eyes. Coupled with the fact that he had glaucoma, he lost his sight on his left eye. During those days when ophthalmological technology is still a chasm from what it is presently, any hope of cure for such a condition was bleak. Where was Optimus Prime when my dad needed him most? Why didn’t the Volvo 240GL transform into an autobot shielding him from those splinters? A deceptocon would’ve been alright too!

It is when events like these, changes lives forever. Recently, I had a patient who passed away after a month in the ICU. He had a bad heart, a bad lung, and bad blood supply to the brain. But it’s his daughter that I recall so clearly. She witnessed how we resuscitated her father, dialyzed him, sponged, cleaned, fed, repositioned, counseled, encouraged, reassured, advised families, educated, listened to, cared for. She got a good glimpse of what nursing was all about. And one day she said, ‘I want to be a nurse, just like all of you’. We were her Optimus Prime, we were her Bumble Bee.

So again, I managed to relish another movie or a childhood past to something nursing worthy. Little things we do, or the routines we dread each day we drag our heavy heads to work, is noticed. We change lives, we are catalysts of influence. It is events like these, that makes me feel proud being a nurse.

My dad completely lost his sight. From narrowing visual fields to only identifying day and night, glaucoma got the best out of him. 10 years on and I realize that he had his own personal metal clunks. It was my mom, my 2 brothers and me. We are his eyes.

We are his heroes. He is my hero.